Today the Treasury Department announced a "Mortgage Modification Conversion Drive," designed to push servicers to move borrowers in the government's Home Affordable Modification Program from the initial trial phase to the permanent phase.
A little follow up to my post yesterday. I knew I'd probably upset the folks at Treasury, and I did.
As you probably could have guessed, I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and say that the housing market is all fine and dandy now that we've seen two months of big jumps in existing home sales.
I didn't know about it either. Yes, the US Department of Agriculture has a program, instituted back in the 1940s, to assist in rural development, that has become extremely popular during these days of crunching credit. These are USDA-backed loans, so approved lenders can offer no-money down.
While you may think the economy is improving a bit -- and that government assistance has had an impact -- the foreclosure crisis is not.
A lot of housing data hit the wires today, much of it unexpected and confusing, so let's start at the top.
The home buyer tax credit was extended and expanded, and mortgage interest rates have actually been trending even lower, but housing's recovery is still being hampered by new appraisal rules.
A new survey shows that even in those markets where investor competition has returned and prices on the low end are beginning to stabilize, homeowners still owe far more on their mortgages than their homes are currently worth.
I knew it was coming, but I guess I was hoping it wouldn't be quite so tunnel-visioned. The Realtor's chief economist, Lawrence Yun, released his Housing and Economic Forecast this afternoon. The extension and expansion of the first time home buyer tax credit was the lead, as expected, with Yun claiming it would bring not only home sales but home prices back out of the basement in 2010.
